Recollections

On Easter Sunday morning, while sitting in a pew waiting for services to start, I flipped back to Ezekiel 37, which details the beautiful prophecy that would have leapt to the minds of most Second Temple Jews when they heard of "resurrection." The Spirit of the Lord carries Ezekiel to a grim valley of dry bones, and then proceeds to tell the prophet that these bones, which represent the deathliness of Israel’s life in exile, will one day rattle to life.

That passages comes in the context of other prophecies about Israel’s imminent return to a fruitful land. Chapters 36 and 37 offer hope in a book of prophecy that is often dark and unflinching in its proclamations of judgment. But one thing that struck me about the chapters is the way that Ezekiel describes God’s motivation for restoring Israel. Why did God promise to breathe life back into their bones, to set them again on their hills with their flocks?

An answer that leaps immediately to mind — and particularly to the Christian mind — is that God loved Israel, loved each and every child of Abraham, loved so powerfully that he could not bear to see the valleys littered with their bones. But it is worth noting that this is not the motive that Ezekiel assigns to God’s action.  Instead, God says that he will act out of concern for his name, which has been profaned and blasphemed among the nations.  As long as Israel has been in exile, the surrounding nations have mocked their claims that the God of Israel alone is God. So God resolves to act to restore his name:

Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them; and the nations shall know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when through you I display my holiness before their eyes. (Ezekiel 36:22-23, NRSV)

Perhaps because I had just been reading this passage before the Easter service I attended, I could not help but notice how often that service emphasized that the Passion and resurrection of Jesus had been all for me. "He did this for you." That was the constant refrain of most of the songs sung and the sermons preached. There is an amazing truth in that, of course.  But there’s also something to be said for Ezekiel’s alternative depiction of why God acts: not for me, but for his name’s sake.

That way of putting it may seem less comforting than saying that God acts "just for me."  But uncomfortable as it might be, that way of putting it struck me as a breath of fresh air.  I wonder sometimes whether the extreme personalization of the gospel that often gets preached in the United States — the idea that God did it all for you — stems more from the culture we live in than it does from the gospel itself.  "He did it all for you" sounds not too different from the "it’s all about you" ethos of the consumer culture we live in.  In such a culture, it is jarring to hear that it’s not all about me; it’s all about God.  It’s not my name, finally, that matters, but his.

But ultimately, the reminder that God will act to preserve the honor of his name gives me a firmer hope than the idea that God will act just for me.  I am a fickle, transient being, whose integrity and consistency are unreliable at best.  But if God acts on behalf of his name, I can be sure of his action and his promises to act, no matter who I am or what I do or how much I profane his name.  He restored Israel, he raised Jesus, not to vindicate me, but to vindicate his name among the nations. He will always act out of concern for his name, which means he will never abandon his promises to rescue. To say that doesn’t diminish his concern for me, or dismiss his love as a motive for action. But it makes it impossible for me to make the mistake of thinking that the universe revolves around me. It revolves around God, and I am important only insofar as God displays his holiness through me in the eyes of the nations. He is concerned for me, but it’s because of who he is, not because of who I am.

P.S. In the New Testament, the Letter to the Hebrews makes a similar point about the grounding of our hope on God’s concern for his name. Because God could find no greater name by which to promise blessings, says Hebrews, he “swore by himself,” which gives us the encouragement to seize the hope set before us. (See Hebrews 6:13ff.)